What are Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs) and how to use them?

SKAGs have become a hot topic within the Google Ads community. Some people swear by them while others steer away. Let’s take a closer look at how we utilize SKAGs.

SKAGs stand for ‘single keyword ad groups’ and are designed with a one to one relationship between the root keyword and the ad.  In layman's terms, the ad must contain the keyword somewhere in the copy (headline, description, URL etc).

This means a lot of small ad groups matched with their own individual ad. While this can get messy quickly, the AdWords Editor makes creating these keyword groups pretty easily. 

The main benefits of SKAGs

1) You have better control of your results

Granular ad groups allow you to be more flexible and responsive with changes to your ad campaigns.

2) You can easily turn off poor performing ad groups or keywords

Single keyword ad groups make it easy to see which keywords are underperforming.  Then you can pause those keywords, allowing you to perform quick budget optimizations adjustments.

3) Search term reports go into the correct ad group

The more granular you are with your ad groups, the easier it is to match them to your search term reports.

4) Pinpoint accuracy of your reporting metrics

Instead of seeing an average click through rate or cost per click for many broad keywords, you can see the exact numbers for each of your keywords, match types and search queries. This level of pinpoint accuracy is what you want for your reporting metrics.

5) Increased quality scores

Closely matched ads, keywords, and landing pages lead to increased quality scores.  Higher quality scores decrease your costs and make your ads more efficient.

6) Ads are always matched to keywords

We talked about how matching keywords to ads creates a better user experience.  You'll win more clicks by communicating with customers in their language.

However… it is important to keep in mind. SKAGs don’t always work. 

Here are the drawbacks to SKAGS.

1) SKAGS don't work well in new accounts 

If you're brand new to Google Ad, and you start out with a super granular account structure, Google won't give you any love.

You need to build your way up to this level of efficiency. It’s always best to start with broad ad groups and begin building SKAGs over time.

2) Without an account history, over-optimizing = Low Impressions

Google doesn't like it when you game the system right out of the gate. They want to know they can trust you, which means you have to be a bit inefficient at first.

3) Google’s automation is very powerful

Once you have enough data, Google’s machine learning becomes very powerful. Using SKAGs means you're fighting against Google, which is usually not smart. Using SKAGs can potentially limit search volume.

Our Verdict

New accounts with low data should never start by using SKAGs. For established accounts, SKAGs can be a powerful way to maximize top keyword performance. 

We found it best to only use SKAGs on top performing keywords (Top 10-15% keyword in terms of conversions) in order to really maximize performance on those specific keywords.